..."Times Winged Chariot Hurrying Near" (Andrew Marvell). The closer we get to "now" the harder it is to remember details which seems counterintuitive, no? I think what it is, is that for the distant past, if any details are missing why the mind just supplies them gratis! But as the slope gets slipperier and closer and all ... the true state-of-affairs is seen eyeball to eyeball and the other eyeball is bigger...
Something like that.
Anyhow...
Back in suburban Connecticut my cup ranneth over. I had it all! Two grey flannel suits now (while one was at the Cleaners, you see). A home in the country
barn, pond, horses - the works!
Then Jean died.
Just like that! Poof!
And she was...
Gone!
Why? How do I know? What do I know? She smoked.. She drank. So do (did) a great many of us. She got lung cancer. They operated. They screwed up: they "lost" her (whereabouts, I mean) at the hospital. In the end, she died.
Eleven days.
Lawyer said I had "a case." (The screw-up part you see). But I was "broke" that is, I was "way over-extended" I mean. Went with life in Fairfield County. The lot of you will never know: count your blessings... (I mean the part about Fairfield County being broke is not all that rare, I realize...).
We scattered her ashes one day around the place. This had been her dream home. Mom said, "Don't ever say a word: if the neighborhood kids find out this will be called the haunted house ever after, and you will never be able to sell it."
I became a hermit.
A real hermit, I mean.
Kids were all gone to college. Just me and the cat and dog and horses.
I fed them every day. And myself now and then.
I tried to service my USEM account. Langler (remember him?) got cancer of the tits (rare in males) and came down to see me because he felt I was "obstructing" his attempts to milk USEM. Something like that. (He had inveigeled the client to pay HIM my fee on the grounds that HIS agency was REALLY the one-of-record holding the account, and which he was then supposed to turn over the fee to me. But often he didn't (on time anyhow) being just one step above bankruptcy himself and he would "co-mingle" my fee with his oeprating funds... He hired this shit of a guy young Turk who was hell bent to steal everything on behalf of Jerry Langler and bring it into the agency: he set his sights on my PR account.
Maybe he got it, Maybe he didn't. I don't really remember. I was in like a ...daze. I remember it was coming on winter and I turned the heat off to save money. I wore long underwear and wool shirts. I worked at my carpentry and blacksmithing through the long winter days and sometimes into the nights. My "friend" (or so I thought) at USEM was "noncommittal". So it all passed away.
They were all assholes anyway.
George Garmus who had worked for me in New York came up one day to see me. I cooked two lobsters for us and my kids ate with us and George ate most of the two lobsters. He was a prick in many, many ways but before he left he said to me, "You need to get out. You can't live shut in like this. Why don't you look up a Universalist Church and go to their "Singles Nights?"
And he was gone. Forever.
So I did!
So I bestirred myself and looked around and found there was a "Singles" group called "Parents Without Partners" name meant nothing to me. The group met in each others' houses, once a week or so so I found out where the next meeting was, and went to it. I sat down kinda nervously on the sofa, and two gals sat down on each side of me. No one said anything. Our host the guy whose house this was greeted us all. To break the ice of these meetings, it was customary you see, to pose an "obligatory" question-for-the-night... and then all were to discuss it. Tonight's question was: "And How Did You Feel When It Finally Happened?"
Jean's death was not too many months behind me, and the question suddenly brought back a rush of dismal feelings and memories and all and I was wondering however I was going to handle all this when it came my turn...
But the gal on my right went first, and she got up, and in a loud, clear voice began to speak and she was saying things like "I never was so relieved in my life," and "I felt like I had been born again," and "I was so happy to see him go" and stuff like that and My Gawd!, I thought, "What kind of a den of monsters here have I strayed into?"
Later it dawned on me: these were divorcee's and the divorced speaking! "It" for them is not "death" but divorce! Someone said, "You might do better in a Widow/Widowers Group," buddy...
So the following week, I found the Universalist Church group which was much, much larger and more highly organized. But what a scene! I had no idea...
There were young gals, old gals. Racy-looking Latin gals from Bridgeport. Divorcee's from all over Suburbia (this was in Westport, you see, and "the word" was that the divorcee's showed up here in droves angling for the "many" just divorced males who were "in advertising" as specially prized catches). And there were widows in droves. And young guys, old guys, all kinda guys... Huge throng! Not really my "thing" you see... but at least it was people and life, and things going on... They had dances, and outings, and picnics, and they went on "dates" and all kinds of things!
Jeezul!
So this first nite I went, the lady at the door says, "You smoking or Non-smoking?"
Jean, dead of tobacco, and her ashes not scattered these four months past I blurted out: "Non-smoking!" in loud voice.
A die was cast and I went down the chute to the right...
Emerson I think it was once wrote something... "Waking or sleeping we know not those forces that affect out lives..."
Next there was a registration table and the lady was demanding of me: "Widows or Divorced?" Wow! I thought, "Is this ever organized!" Maybe by the time we all get sieved out here, we will just be automatically paired-off and nothing else left to chance like those Hindu or is it Amish (I can't recall.... LOL) marriages where the bride and groom meet for the first time at the nuptial ceremony itself. Like in the old National Geographic pictures where the brides arrive at their weddings with their long outer skirts thrown up over their heads and all that. I looked around: so far no such open breach of decorum as that...
Next, we were assigned to rooms. Each room had an "Interlocutor". (I already knew this drill. Old China hand you might say). They sat up front and read off the assigned topic. Tonight's was: "What do you do if her body language says yes, but she says no?"
Jeezul! I never felt so out of place. There was this gal, though a pretty blonde lady - who sat nearby and our eyes met. I shrugged, and so did she.
Some Latin from Bridgeport got up and delivered a phillipic against Males. Others added their two-bits worth. Then there was punch and cookies inthe main gathering area upstairs.
Then we all left for the night.
Next week I was back. So was the blonde lady.
We introduced ourselves.
She said, "Do you come here often?"
"No," I said " mostly just when you do".
We laughed.
There was another nitwit question for the Interlocuter that night..
Next week same thing. We were back.
Then we started going out after the meetings to "...have a drink" on our own. Got to know each other.
Then one night it was announced there would be a "dance" Saturday night. The blonde lady said she was coming would I be coming , too? "Sure," I said. "Bet on it".
Saturday night was some scene. Singles up the wahzoo. I had some dance partner from somewhere (maybe it was Maude the onetime postman's widow who had taken a shine to me and used to have me over for dinner now and then... Jeezul!). In the press, the blonde lady and her partner passed nearby. I was telling Maude about "garnets" how I knew a place where you could dig them out of the ground, and all the rockhound collectors went there. The blonde lady (her name was Millie) heard this, and pushed right through the throng to my side: "Garnets? Garnets?," she said, "What garnets?"
I said it was a place all the rock collectors roundabout knew, and where you could go and pick them up.
Her eyes narrowed she stiff-armed her impatient partner to one side: "Would you take me there?, " she said.
"Why you bet!" I said. "How about Saturday?"
She said "Yes!" With an enthusiastic whoop - then she and her partner and I and mine danced away into the throng.
So Saturday rolled around and I warmed up the Jeep and got into my field gear and picked up a couple of Italian Grinders and a bottle of wine and drove over to Millie's (she actually lived a very short distance away). I pulled into the drive and just a few minutes later out the door and down the drive she came.
But what was this?
Mill was a gorgeous lady, and she looked not unlike Zsa-Zsa Gabor many thought, including me (I have a big oil painting in storage somewhere that some artist did of her once; if I ever can find it again I shall post a copy here). And she was a dresser (needed in her business: more later). And she loved jewelry and had tons of it! (The real goods!). And here she was coming down the drive all dolled up to the nines and I couldn't believe it! (Later, after we had married, and my daughter had gone to work for her, she told me that at work her co-workers often called her "Broadway Mill." Grin!).
So my surprise at her getup for a Saturday "in the field" was met by her equally surprised look as she got into the passenger seat and surveyed my clothes...
We both spoke at once: "I thought you said we were going for garnets...Can you walk in the woods with those shoes?"
LOL!
Slowly it all began to dawn...
She was bigtime "into" finished jewelry (including garnets! LOL) and I saw everything in terms of a naturalist's field trip. But Mill was a good sport and nothing would do but I was to deliver on my end by "...showing her the garnets!"
And so we drove up to the old Roxbury Mine Hill region north of us. And years ago my pals and I had run across one of the old abandoned open face workings formerly worked for the garnet deposits here. It was way back in the woods down this "4-wheel" road and then up into some farmer's private holdings he often kept an old bull out in the vicinity...
We bounced along deeper and deeper into the woods the jeep grinding through water holes and over boulders and Mill hanging on for dear life her eyes out on stalks (it was her first ride ever in a jeep and first time ever off paved roads! LOL!)
Finally we got there and I helped her climb the loose, yellowish subsoil of the slope and then we paused for breathe. "Soooo," says she. "Where's all the garnets?"
"Right at your feet," I said and reached down and picked one up. Now be it understood for the non-mineralogical reader here that these were "non-gemmy" garnets, heavy on the iron end of their formula (I forget the actual mineralogical variety name) but they were all perfect dodecahedrons (20-sided polygons) which peculiarity alone lent them great interest... Some were as big as goose eggs and they were everywhere about. Millie said, "What? These? Garnets?" 
And so I carefully introduced her to the world of non-gemmy garnets and their plebian use (at one time anyhow) in "garnet paper" and as industrial abrasives of very wide note.
Well, we had a great laugh over that me just assuming that no one would think there were gem-quality garnets lying around in the woods just for the picking up, and she over her introduction to the "diamond-in-the-rough" world that lies behind every polished gemstone in the jewlers' window...
We must have picked up a water pail of them and then went back down to the jeep. We climbed in and ate the Grinders and drank most of the bottle of wine. Her attire was a bit worse for the wear from the rough outing; I was a bit concerned she might be put out with it all. But on the ride back she turned to me and said, "You know I have never walked in the woods like that nor ridden in a jeep before. 
I don't think I ever had so much fun!"
So we resigned from the "Singles Scene" and began to date direct. She was a recent widow and moreover had inherited her father's thriving stationers and printing business in downtown Stamford. Brock Press. Actually, a sort of "landmark" firm there. Mill ran the whole business (a big one!). Not long after, my daughter had graduated from College (as a teacher). And she had gone to work teaching in some upstate public school somewhere when she came to me on about hers second day there and said this was not for her...! I asked why.
She said that the kids were unruly and disobedient and when she tried to call for order and decorum in the classroom they sassed her and later she had been worried about her tires being slashed in the parking lot.
(Nothing like a public school education in the good old U.S. of A. to set you on the right road in life anymore, is there?).
I mentioned this to Mill. She said send her around to see me. The upshot was she hired Candy on the spot! And she has continued so employed to this very day nearly 30 years later even as the company wound its way through the "Forest of Merger-dom" which is so much the fate of American businesses in these latter days... rising steadily in the ranks to a cherished position in upper management!
Charity begins at home which was not the only thing we all came to learn and love about "Broadway Mill"....
In February the following year, Millie and I married both for the second time. Simple ceremony at her home in Norwalk. And left next day for our honeymoon in Acapulco...